


What Was It You Wanted?

by Disgruntled Isaballe (AprilwithaBlueGuitar)



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Character Bashing, Character Study, Crack Relationships, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gun Violence, Heavy Angst, Self-Esteem Issues, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 19:40:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17904347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AprilwithaBlueGuitar/pseuds/Disgruntled%20Isaballe
Summary: Two neglected friends of one Max Caulfield meet in the intersection of their growing frustration with her. Slowly, Max becomes less and less of the focus as they interloop in each others lives.





	What Was It You Wanted?

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting this fic because I enjoyed writing it even if It makes no sense lol. May or may not continue it.

Warren Graham sat in the dark, occasionally leaning back in his computer chair, as he checked his phone for what must be the 50th time for a reply that he knew will never come. And if it did come, it’ll be nothing short of a brick wall that he’d be scraping his nails against trying to get through.

 

The movie on is barely paid attention to like most things when Max Caulfield is on his mind. He has a physics exam tomorrow but had stop and started before giving up studying altogether to read and send texts.

 

It’s moments like this that self-awareness comes in its full ugly honesty.

 

__She is just not digging you, man._ _

 

__I mean, look at yourself. Look at the people she likes. People with conviction, people with personality, people with power - you have nothing, man._ _

__

__Mr. Jeffers0n. That punk girl… What was her name again? Chloe or something?_ _

__

__She’s too sweet to say no… Which is insulting but you’re too stupid to realize it by thinking its sweet in the first place._ _

__

More often than these moments pass unheeded and when they return, they return at the price of stolen dignity.

 

Warren shut off the projector and decided to go for a walk.

 

The weather is not too warm, not too cold - kind of like Max in a way. The leaves hovered in the wind and are brushed aside kind of like him in a way. 

 

It’s laughable to talk about hurt pride this late in the game. If he had any pride to begin with, he would have stopped a long time ago.

 

The sun is sinking low and he knew that when the darkness hit in an hour or so, that he’d be feeling the weight of his actions. His stomach groaned and he grimaced. In thinking about her, texting her, jacking off in the toilet to one of the artsy selfies she reluctantly gave him after a roundabout compliment about it looking good on his wall, he forgot to feed himself. Thankfully the selfie he plasters with a massive load of jizz after backing himself up out of chivalry is a scanned and printed copy - he wouldn’t dare think about soiling the original. Art too sacred to desecrate but a copy of a copy never hurt, right?

 

The wind felt like her hand on his skin, silent and barely existing.

 

Warren spotted his car at the end of the parking lot. The diner seemed like a good place to satiate his hunger. The necessary one. The basic human function he forgot to do. He felt like an idiot for that. As he made his way across, his eyes low, he heard a rattling roar of a truck pulling into the lot. He looked up and he could make out a beanie hat and…blue hair? To the side of her, a familiar shaggy head of brown hair and waifish face.

 

The boy’s stomach free-falls as recognition dawns on his features. He could have sworn he heard her voice call out to him as he fumbled with his keys and managed to unlock the car door. He could have imagined it; he didn’t look back to confirm.

 

The diner was populated by a few familiars and some strangers. Thankfully, no one from his school. He picked a seat at the very back, near the old jukebox. Joyce, the waitress, looked exhausted but nonetheless smiled in his direction and motioned that she’d be over in a second.

 

Warren smiled; here he felt warm and regarded. A little safe haven. He was frugal and didn’t come here often but when he did, it soothed him. The food wasn’t half bad either.       

 

He glanced at the menu and looked at the specials. Should he treat himself? A little comfort food never hurt. It’s not like she’d look at him anyway to notice a few pounds gained.

 

Joyce made her way over. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she said, flipping open her notebook. “Studies going well at the academy?”

 

“Better than ever!” Warren flashed her a dorky thumb-up but even a kid could see how sad and desperate it looked than usual. “Being a whiz doesn’t come with lollygagging.” He kicked himself mentally from how stupid that had come out.

 

Joyce softly frowned and looked back towards the kitchen then back at the teen. “Consider this one on the house, okay? Just a little incentive, if you will, to keep on keeping on.” She positioned her pen, ready to take his order. “What’ll it be today?”

 

Warren smiled a bit more genuinely this time. Who sulks at free food? “Just the special, please and thank you, ma’am.”

 

Joyce placed her hands on her hips. “How many times do I tell you not to call me ma’am? I’m not old yet!”

 

He laughed and apologized for his slight; she forgave him with a wink and went into the kitchen.

 

As he waited for his order, he sits back in the booth and rests his hands behind his head, closing his eyes. For a brief instance, he felt something akin to peace. But that wasn’t to last.

 

The jingle of the door and a thud of heavy footsteps made him open his eyes and who he saw made his stomach churn. Chloe. The blue-haired bitch. Staring right at him.

 

“Max was trying to call you. Something about a flash drive.” She plops down in the booth on the seat across from him, crossing. “But you were too busy scurrying away.”

 

Warren didn’t respond, only looked down at the table, unconsciously tapping his finger its cool surface.

 

The girl’s expression only soured. She clicked her teeth before producing the small flash drive and sliding it across the table.

 

Warren looks at it and then pushes it back, making brief contact with Chloe’s eyes.

 

“I don’t want it. Tell her she can keep it.”

 

“Tell her your damn self. I’m not your personal mail service.”

 

Warren takes the flash drive and places it under the table. He brings his foot down on it, destroying his large cache of portable film.

 

“Saved myself the trouble.”

 

Chloe looks down at the destroyed flash drive and then slowly up at him with a scowl. She stands up at full height and glowers down at him.

 

“What the fuck is your issue? I came all this way and you shit all over my time?? Let me guess…you’re pissy at Max because she won’t lay you?!”

 

Warren doesn’t even have to ask. They tell each other __everything.__ He’s the outsider and he’s intruding on something. And like all confrontations, he just…walks away. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with this shit. Fuck the food. He’d get something from a gas station on the way so long as he didn’t put up with any more bullshit today.

 

She called after him but he doesn’t listen. She follows him.

 

Chloe’s hand roughly grabs him by the shirt cuff and she yanks him around to face her.

 

“What the hell are you doing, you bitch??” Warren never talked this way but anger enables him. Chloe hits him in the mouth with the back of her hand, leaving him reeling.

 

“No wonder Max avoids you.” Chloe snapped. “You’re a creep and a pussy. Don’t think I don’t see all those messages.”

 

Warren wiped the blood that started to leak from his lip, saying nothing.

 

“Max may be too nice to say it but I tell it like it is. So…”

 

Warren looked up at her with utter contempt. “I get it. Now will you let me be on my way?”

 

Chloe approached him, only stopping with a few inches of personal space between them. The next words made Warren do a double take.

 

“Do you want my help?”

 

Warren blinked out of confusion. Mostly to ward off the oncoming headache that came out of sudden whiplash this conversation took a turn to.

 

“What?”

 

“Do. You. Want. My. Help?” She repeated slower so he could comprehend.

 

Warren didn’t know what the hell Chloe was getting at. Why would he accept this abrasive, selfish bitch’s help? Especially after all the emasculating in the restaurant.

 

“Fuck off.” He turned and walked away from her, going to his car. Today was a shitshow. He needed to go home and sleep it off.

 

Chloe spoke again after he took a few steps. “I saw that black eye you got for Max.”

 

Warren stopped and looked back at the bluenette. There was a silence.

 

“What do you mean by help?”

 

Chloe jerks her thumb to the truck. “Follow me. There’s a cool place I go to decompress.”

  

Once he got his food to go and left a baffled Joyce in his wake, Warren sat behind the wheel of his car, trailing Chloe’s pickup truck. Why he didn’t jet off despite alarms ringing in his head? Well, curiosity follows danger. Chloe was something that was light-years away on another planet that he couldn’t comprehend if he tried.

 

Warren stared at the blue locks lit up by the fading sun through the pickup’s back window. He wondered where this excursion would lead him.

 

When they finally stopped, Warren reluctantly turned off his car and exited it. Chloe beckoned him into the maw of rust and scrap. He followed.

 

“How you like it?” Chloe gestured to the vast piles of forgotten rubbish ravaged by weather and time.

 

“Could use a ladies’ touch.” Warren replied. He was careful making his way to the clearing where she stood. Last thing he needed was an infection from something unsanitary piercing his foot.

 

Chloe snorted. “Good thing I brought you here, right, bitchboy?” She fetched a smoke from her flannel pocket and went to sit on a log while lighting up. “Maybe you can freshen up the place while I kick back. For example….” Chloe lazily directed her fingers to a cluster of empty liquor bottles. “You can clean all those up and make this place look pretty.”

 

Warren shook his head and crossed his arms. “I’m afraid a heap of shit will always be a heap of shit but…”

 

“But what?”

 

“It fits you. You know, the whole punk trash vibe.”

 

She stuck her middle finger up at him. “Blow it out your ass. This is Chloe’s American Wasteland. My kingdom. You should play the guest role a little more gratefully. Not even Max has seen it.”

 

Warren eyed her with intrigue and suspicion. “Why is that? Matter of fact is there a reason you brought me to this place? This looks like a place to “dispose of evidence” if you catch my drift.”

 

Chloe laughed and started choking on the smoke that was coming from her mouth. Warren noticed the scent of weed in the air and stepped back, hoping that it wouldn’t cling to his clothes.

 

“You watch too many fucking movies, man!” She coughed and laid back on the log, looking up at the darkening sky. She was silent for a while.

 

“What do you think about Max?”

 

Warren sat on the grass, a little ways off from her. “Don’t you already know? You said that you already saw the texts I send her.”

 

“Yeah. It’s pathetic honestly.”

 

Just what he needed to hear.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“You didn’t answer my question.”

 

Warren closed his eyes. In the darkness, he conjured up her ghost. Her face, her eyes and hair, her voice, her everything. He tried to pinpoint what it was about her that entranced him.

 

A voice helped him along.

 

__Because she was kind enough to give your sorry ass the time of day._ _

__

Warren opened his eyes and cast them to the dirt. “I..I don’t know. She’s…nice, I guess.”

 

Chloe scoffed and swore under her breath. “You think being left on seen for a day or two is bad? Come back to me when you've been disregarded for 5 years by someone you thought was your best friend. Does that sound __nice__  to you?”

 

Warren’s eyes shot up at Chloe from the hard edge in her voice; her fists seemed to balled up.

 

“No, I didn’t mean-”

 

“Save it. Don’t need you feeling sorry for me too.”

 

…

 

“I needed her at that time too. But no…I guess life had other priorities for her rather than her childhood friend.”

 

Chloe stood up and tossed the bud she was holding into one of the heaps. Warren looked up at her. Darkness had swallowed the sky now. Lights came through the forest and the blare of a train horn and accompanying trample of wheels against track could be heard. Then it was gone.

 

Warren didn’t know what to think or say. She stood silently, her back towards him, facing the trees. Maybe he wasn’t equipped for heavy moments like this. She was practically a stranger.

 

He hesitated as he approached her. What would she do if he tried to console her in his awkward but friendly way?

 

__Trying to get in pants too?_ _

__

Fuck off.

 

Warren placed his shaking hand on her shoulder. Chloe stiffened up and recoiled upon contact. She stared at him. He couldn’t make out what was behind her eyes, they were impenetrable under her bangs and beanie.

 

He spoke first. “Sorry, I just thought…” He trailed off. It was best that he go. An eerie feeling shook him and he just ran off back to his car. He didn’t hear any footsteps behind him; he didn’t look back to confirm.

 

 

The passing days gave no presence of Chloe. Max had texted him but he did not respond. Those eyes haunted him from that day. Cold and unwilling to yield to the vulnerability of intimacy.

 

__You didn’t even get her name or number. You just ran. You limp dick fuckwhit._ _

__

It wasn’t the time. And I never thought about getting it in the first place.

 

Warren exited his final class of the day. It was a Friday; the students all filed out, excited about weekend plans. He didn’t have any friends to really hang with so as usual, he’d return to his room to change and decide whether to sleep or just drive as far as he could. Maybe see a movie.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Max file out of a classroom, holding her trusty Polaroid camera. Warren lowered his head but she had already seen him. ”Hey, Warren! Hey!” That tremble in her voice annoyed him. Her unsure posture too. And then her wandering eyes.

 

Warren sighed and stopped. He wasn’t brought up to be rude; he would deal with this.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Did Chloe get your flash drive to you? She…or you didn’t really get back to me.”

So Chloe is her name…

 

“I got it just fine. Thanks.” Why you couldn’t do it yourself when I asked before?

 

“Good. I mean, you never really know with her, she’s a real wild card.”

 

“She __is__ your friend. I suppose you’d know her best.” He didn’t know why but what Max said made him angry. He turned to go.

 

“Later. I got somewhere to be…”

 

He walked out the two double doors and he could have sworn he heard the click of a camera.

 

He found himself at the junkyard instead of his usual haunts. He didn’t recall the drive that lead him there. As he exited his car, he could heard the loud echo of a gunshot and the shattering of glass. Against his gut, he ran into the junkyard.

 

The blue-haired punk was aiming a revolver at bottles on a ledge that she had set up. Another shot rang out and another glass shattered. She lifted a bottle to her lips unsteadily and drank. The amber liquid ran down her chin and onto her shirt. Then she threw it up, stepped back, aimed and fired. Warren instinctively ducked when shards of glass splintered down upon him and Chloe merely raised her arm to shield herself.

 

Her eyes finally fixed upon the crouching boy and she lowered the gun. “Oh…it’s you.” She said as he rose from the ground. She put the safety on and approached him, a slight unevenness in her gait.

 

“What the hell were you… How’d you get a gun? Isn’t it dangerous to be shooting that and drinking?!”

 

“What do you care? Better question, why’d the fuck did you run last time?”

 

Warren froze, remembering those eyes that stared through him in the near darkness.

 

“I thought I pissed you off of something by touching you!”

 

Chloe raised her eyebrow and turned to return to the log where more bottles lay in the grass. She popped the cap off of one and put it to her lips. A belch came from her throat and then a reply.

 

“I wasn’t angry… Just surprised.”

 

“Surprised?”

“Surprised that you’d have the balls to even try it.”

 

Warren ignored the insult underlining her response.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Chloe put the drink down. “No. As you can see.” She shot a glance at the bottles around her feet.

 

“What were you going to help me with?”

 

Chloe’s icy cerulean eyes looked up at him but she said nothing.

 

“You look like you need more help than me.” He regretted the moment that came out of his mouth.

 

Chloe’s eyes narrowing and she almost seemed to rare up like a snake poised to strike.

 

“I-I talked to Max and she said-”

 

“I don’t like being talked about behind my back.”

 

“She was only asking if you got my flash drive to me.”

 

“What else did she say?”

 

“She just was wondering because you didn’t get back to her! She said you were a bit of a wild card so-”

 

Chloe’s eyes flared. “A wild card?? A fucking wild card? I can be consistent and stable if she was too!”

 

Warren stood up and put up his hand slowly. The gun was out.

 

“Chloe…p-put down the gun.” His eyes were drawn to it. The steel glinted in the light and his gut was clenching, knowing that something was going to go down.

 

He took a step forward.

 

“She says I’m a wild card! I’ll show her a fucking wild card!” Chloe put the gun to her temple. “Russian Roulette. Let’s fucking do it.”

 

Warren stopped in his tracks. What kind of person did he get involved with?

 

She spun the barrel with her thumb. “Whatever happens, I guess it was meant to fucking be. I should’ve bit the bullet a long time ago anyway.”

“Chloe, you’re overreacting, man! Just put it down!” Chloe’s finger went towards the trigger and he lunged. The gun flew out of her hand and fired. It hit something to the wayside and the two hit the ground. Chloe’s dyed blue hair was spread all around her head like a halo as she looked up into the sky, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

 

Warren shut his eyes as he lay next to her. His ears were ringing and he too was breathing as if he was running a marathon. He thought he could hear, through the static and chimes, a sniffle. He didn’t bother to look over at the girl next to him. He just reached over, took her hand in his and let her cry.

 

__You fucking idiot._ _

__

Those words echoed in head as he drove her back to Blackwell with him. He didn’t bother retrieving the gun.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Back to my Blackwell. We’re going to talk to Max.”

 

“I don’t want to see her. I’m tired, man. Don’t chuck me into a shitstorm.”

 

Warren glanced sideways at her and then looked ahead with a nod. “Then I will. You can rest in my dorm.”

 

“You better not try anything….” Chloe fell asleep, the weight of the day winning against her eyelids and consciousness.

 

His hand was still in hers and he could feel it tighten.  


End file.
